New Prints by Aaron Spangler
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PresstimeFALL/WINTER 2014 Luddite: New Prints by Aaron Spangler Opening Evening with the Artist Friday, October 10, 6:30 – 9:00 p.m. On view October 10 – November 15, 2014 Story on page 3 Aaron Spangler, The Wall, 2014, edition of 6, woodcut, 60 x 36 inches (paper size) HIGHPOINTPRINTMAKING.ORG 2 From Luddite: the Directors New Prints from Aaron Spangler An event not to be missed… Opening Evening with the Artist: Friday, October 10, 6:30 – 9:00 p.m. FIVE On view: October 10 – November 15, 2014 HP’s Building Birthday Bash Saturday, November 22, 6:00 –10:00 p.m. Dear Friends, Highpoint Editions is proud to present work extends out from the hermetic environ Please join Highpoint to celebrate five Luddite: New Prints by Aaron Spangler. of the studio and into the communities with years in our beautiful building! We can’t Please join Highpoint for the opening which he is connected: from the local timber believe it has been five years at our reception and a chance to meet the artist industry with whom he collaborates, to the permanent home on Lake Street in the on Friday, October 10. The exhibition printers at Highpoint.” (Excerpted from heart of South Minneapolis. This party will will feature ten hand-printed woodcuts an essay by Eric Sutphin; Aaron Spangler: bring together the “team” that helped developed in collaboration between the Luddite at Highpoint Editions, August 2014.) shape HP2 — architects from James artist and Highpoint. Several of the prints Dayton Design, many creative individuals are monumental in scale. Primarily known for About Aaron Spangler: Aaron Spangler and businesses that contributed to the his sculptural work, Spangler is a virtuosic lives and works in Park Rapids, MN. He building project, board members past and self-taught sculptor of wood. He carves received a BFA from the Minneapolis College present, donors, funders and of course, we intuitively, incorporating subjects from of Art and Design, Minneapolis, MN, and hope — YOU! his daily life and surroundings to create has received grants and fellowships from the compositions layered with political and McKnight Foundation, the Minnesota State More information to be unveiled in the social meaning. Arts Board, and the Jerome Foundation. coming months, but here’s the basic plan: Aaron Spangler has been collaborating Spangler’s work is held in the collections of • Great Food, Drink and Music with Highpoint Editions over the past two The Art Gallery of Ontario, The Hammer • ONE NIGHT ONLY for event guests: years, carving his woodcuts from basswood Museum, and Walker Art Center, among special prices on select HP Editions prints harvested and cut at the small, local Two others. Aaron Spangler is represented by • A silent auction to support HP’s Inlets sawmill near his home in Northern Zieher Smith & Horton Gallery, New York City. acclaimed Education & Community Minnesota. Some of these blocks are more programs than 4 feet by 8 feet — all were printed at HP by hand. The artist has developed a Be sure to RSVP soon…this event will sell rich vocabulary: an atmosphere, tonality out! Look for your invite mid-October, or and patterning unusual for woodcut that call Highpoint at 612.871.1326. emphasizes the medium’s physicality. Monumental or modest in scale, the images Ticket Options Available: all hover between emerging from the surface $175 (Collector Level) 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. and being embedded in it. As Spangler Early entrance to event giving Collector sees it: “Each of these pieces stand in their guests first choice of one night only own worlds, though consistent themes in HP Editions special print prices. Hors my work are present in all of them. Themes d’oeuvres, champagne, and Valet parking of rural chaos, personal paranoia, political included. Limited to 100 guests. anger, nature’s beauty and bounty, stoicism, severe religion, wellness and spiritual bliss.” $65 (Builder Level) 8:00 – 10:00 p.m. “In this series of large-scale woodcuts, Enjoy the evening of food, drink and music, Spangler exhibits his mastery (it is said plus special one night only print prices. one needs to clock 10,000 hours of labor Limited to 150 guests. in his or her trade to carry the title, and Spangler has been at it for nearly two Have a great Fall and hope to see you at decades) of carving, drawing and positive/ Aaron Spangler signing prints FIVE on November 22! negative spatial arrangements to this robust ensemble of prints. The immediate, in- Carla McGrath, Executive Director your-face graphic quality of the medium is Major support: Cole Rogers, Artistic Director harnessed as a vehicle to deliver a series of and Master Printer prints which crackle with energy. Whether in sculpture or in these woodcuts, Spangler’s 3 Stand Out Prints 2014 Highpoint’s International Juried Exhibition Opening reception: Friday, September 5, 6:30 – 9:00 p.m. On view: September 5 – October 4, 2014 quote marks, at once earnest and ironic, For the viewer, this plays out in hovering atop one of the nearly 800 entries reverse — looking, we peel back the lines for Stand Out Prints. I did not know the and layers of ink; the sleek or robust paper; artist’s name, but I did know that I was in the carved wood; the eye of the camera; trouble. The entries were problematically the artist’s hand. What we reach in the end good. It had quickly become apparent that if is the tiny, hard kernel of someone else’s I were to make a selection based simply on experience. But what we gain is our own. quality, exhibition visitors would be wading The whole point of printed matter is through knee-deep piles of prints piled that it is, at one and the same time, the on the floor. I needed to locate a theme object in hand and the place or person or from the multiple streams of content, style, time or emotion it represents. It gives us medium and approach running through here. And there. the entered works. There were many strong options: the environment; violence and injustice; memory and childhood; photographic imagery; non-photographic imagery. Again and again, however, what pulled me up short was a more ineffable quality: a concentration on a specific place, a specific moment in time — like a finger Ericka Walker, There, lithograph urgently pointed to say, “here.” This flew in the face of what we know to be true of Highpoint is pleased to announce the return our world — the exponential acceleration of Stand Out Prints, Highpoint’s juried of virtuality, the profusion of pixels without exhibition that takes place every two years. location, images without context, places See what’s happening in printmaking without substance. So it was fascinating. About Susan Tallman: Susan Tallman is an on an international scale. With submitted The prints chosen for this show all art historian who has written extensively on works from 46 states and international exhibit this sense of specific location. They the history and culture of the print, as well submissions from Canada, the UK, Australia, do so in landscapes and photogravures, as on issues of authenticity, reproduction Israel, Ireland and Latvia, this exhibition in portraits and abstractions, in six-foot- and multiplicity. She is Editor-in-Chief of offers 67 select impressions in contemporary wide etchings and three-inch-tall pochoirs. the international journal and website Art in printmaking from 63 artists. Highpoint was Sometimes the flavor is elegiac, sometimes Print, and her writing has appeared in Art in thrilled with the quality and quantity of the celebratory, sometimes sardonic. In America, Parkett, Public Art Review, Art on submitted work. Highpoint received 837 each case, the artist has grabbed from Paper, Print Quarterly, Arts Magazine and individual images submitted by 293 artists. the moving surface of time something many other publications. Her books include After considerable deliberation, juror Susan concrete — the opposite of a Snapchat. The Contemporary Print: from Pre-Pop to Tallman chose a cohesive exhibition that Perhaps this explains the profusion of Postmodern (Thames and Hudson),The highlights contemporary printmakers and notoriously laborious techniques: reduction Collections of Barbara Bloom (Steidl), and looks stellar in HP’s gallery spaces. linocuts strategically wrought in successive numerous museum catalogues. She has A special thanks to all the artists who stages from a single block; mezzotints lived and worked in New York, Amsterdam submitted work, and to our juror, Susan whose gleaming lights were burnished by and Berlin, and currently teaches in the Tallman. Please enjoy her juror statement hand from rough metal. In the era of zX Departments of Printmedia and Art History, that follows! zV, such acts of sustained attention and Theory and Criticism at the School of the Art Juror Statement by Susan Tallman: protracted making become more markedly Institute of Chicago. “There.” The word caught my eye: its what they have always been: instruments for antiquated letter design and self-conscious understanding the world more deeply. HIGHPOINTPRINTMAKING.ORG 4 Highpoint Editions Artist Mungo Thomson with Master Printer Cole Rogers New Collaborations Ongoing Mungo Thomson Jim Hodges Mungo Thomson began a collaboration was composed of twelve ‘pencils’ (painted Highpoint Editions has been collaborating with Highpoint Editions over the summer, sculptures fabricated in actual size) found on new prints with artist Jim Hodges. developing new work with Master Printer scattered across the ceiling as if launched Over the last 16 months the artist has Cole Rogers. Thomson is a Los Angeles– by a frustrated writer. Thomson’s art often been working and reworking the plates, based artist whose work explores mass focuses on banal objects or situations that making sensitive but decisive adjustments culture and cosmology.